In Tennessee, Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, said state employees should have the day off and set aside more than $690,000 in the annual budget to cover the overtime costs of any employee who worked on Juneteenth.
But when the bill came up for discussion during a February committee hearing, Sen. Joey Hensley, a Republican, said he had spoken with more than 100 constituents about the holiday. Only two knew what it was, he said.
“I just think it’s putting the cart before the horse to make a holiday people don’t know about,” Hensley said during the hearing. “We need to educate people first and then make a holiday if we need to.”
The bill came out of committee but was taken off the legislative calendar later that month.
The resistance from some legislators recalls the tension that sprang out of efforts to make the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a paid holiday throughout the country.
President Ronald Reagan signed King’s birthday into federal law in 1983, but by 1990, Montana, New Hampshire and Arizona still had not made the day a legal holiday. In 1986, Bruce Babbitt, governor of Arizona and a Democrat, enacted the holiday, but his successor, Gov. Evan Mecham, a Republican, quickly rescinded it the following year, because he said the governor did not have the authority to take such action.
In 1990, Arizonans voted against a measure that would have made the day a paid holiday, leading Stevie Wonder, the Doobie Brothers and Public Enemy to boycott the state in protest. The NFL also stripped the Phoenix area of its rights to host the 1993 Super Bowl.
In 1992, Arizona voters overwhelmingly agreed to turn King’s birthday into a state holiday.